Portable Media Devices = Early Adopters

September 1 must be "announce reports on the potential of portable media devices day" in analyst land. Today, two firms issued findings on where they see this nascent market heading with both agreeing that it is currently only for the early adopter crowd.

The first report from Parks Associates dubbed the majority of this group of consumers as "Mobile Aficionados," that consisted of more than 40 million Internet users. Parks' findings were based on a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. Internet users and found that:

• 13 percent portable devices owwners wanted live TV integrated into there devices
• 12 percent deemed watching portable video as important.
• nearly 30 percentof those valuing pre-recorded video services capability already own a portable media device and another 7 percent want this function.
• 10 percent of those valuing mobile TV viewing have a capable device, and 24 percent want this function.

Yuanzhe (Michael) Cai at Parks Associates said, "The percentages of consumers interested in mobile video/TV services are smaller than those for other functions such as taking photos and listening to music. But there is a group of hardcore mobile entertainment enthusiasts who are very motivated -- either they have already adopted a portable device with video playback functions or are very eager to add live TV support to their mobile devices."

"Portable multimedia players, portable gaming players, and video phones may soon be competing for these hardcore enthusiasts. Portable multimedia players have a head start, but cellular carriers could offer a variety of business models to offset this advantage, including on-demand viewing of news clips and sport highlights or access to 'real-time' content such as breaking news," Cai added

Over at In-Stat, a similar study found that to move beyond early adopters of portable media players (PMP), several issues must be addressed including, "high price points, digital rights management (DRM) issues, and perhaps most importantly, the increased availability of video content from download video service providers."

Stephanie Guza at In-Stat said, "The good news for PMP vendors is that in the past six months, there has been increased activity among manufacturers and content providers to promote the availability of video content for PMPs. In addition, new product features such as wireless capability and larger screens will be available on next year’s crop of PMPs; and In-Stat believes that the increased capabilities, coupled with the promise of more video content, are factors that could kick-start the market."

Key findings include:

• Early adopters will remain the primary market for PMPs this year
• The mass market is not yet willing to pay the hefty price tag for PMPs, which is approximately $400 to $500.
• PMPs are competing with other converged devices such as handheld gaming devices, smarter PDAs, and portable DVD players
• By 2009, In-Stat forecasts that worldwide PMP shipments will reach 7.5 million units

Price and easier access to content offerings, and usage model will be critical. Price not only for the devices themselves but also for access to mobile content and services. Right now it is still outside of the price range of most consumers. In my household, there are several devices capable of viewing video - my smartphone, my son's PSP and my daughter's Game Boy Advance SP. We haven't purchased any video content and ripping, encoding and tranferring video to my phone and the PSP takes longer than if I drove to the video store, rented a DVD, watched it, and then returned it. Not a ringing endorsement....yet.